Four years ago today I wrote a piece explaining how Google will support OPML. I'm sure someday they will, and it will be great; and so will all the other search engines. Then everyone will say it's a trivial idea, but then you gotta wonder why it's taking so long.

We brainstormed about this many times in the golden months of podcasting, Adam and I. Basically when your player comes within range of a wifi signal, it synchs up with the cloud, pulling down all the new podcasts you are subscribed to. Same approach would work just as well with music.

Of course Needleman describes an infrastructure with DRM, and that's when everything gets complicated and fragile. All the wireless infrastructure you need is RSS 2.0 with enclosures. Anything more complicated is bad news.

BTW, a similar approach would work with cameras, but the flow is in the other direction. A server subscribes to the output of my camera, and whenever it gets in wifi range, it pulls the new pictures into the cloud. I thought this might have been the substance of the Nikon partnership with Flickr, but it seems not.

Engadget reviews a new MP3 player that's not from Apple that sounds like it's worth a try, the 4GB SanDisk Sansa e260. It's an iPod Nano competitor. The two things I look for are user interface and the ability to play non-DRM content. This baby passes on both counts. They're selling them for $195 on Amazon, I'm going to buy one in a few minutes I bought one this morning.